ous ship across the Atlantic at such an appalling speed. I say
"appalling" because I know. The smoking-room nuisance will say, "Pooh!
My dear fellow, the _Lusitania_ licks us clean with her twenty-five
knots." He is coldly critical because he does not know.

But I digress.

Look around now. You observe we lose very little space in gangways.
Even in front of the engines, where we are walking to and fro, the
space is perilously narrow between the fly-wheel of the reversing
engine and the lathe. Some thirty feet long, this engine-room,
bulkhead to bulkhead, and, save for a recess or two extending to the
ship's skin, penned in between bunkers. Twelve hundred tons of coal,
distributed like a thick wall round us, make the place warm in the
tropics. Forward, the stokeholds, dimly enough lit save when a furnace
door opens and a fiery glow illuminates the bent back and soot-blurred
face of some cosmopolitan fireman. Overhead, each lit by a single
lamp, are the water-gauges--green glass tubes in which the water ebbs
and flows with the motion of the ship.

Well, the time is going fast--'twill soon be four o'clock, eight
bells, and I am relieved. What do I think of on "watch"? That's a
question! The engines chiefly, with an under-current of "other
things." Often and often, in the dark nooks of my dominions, will I
see the glimmering, phantom _light-o'-love_. Sometimes it will come
and sit beside me if all runs smooth, and then I fly across the broad
blue floors of the tropic night sky towards England. Not that my fairy
elf is a fair-weather friend. Through blinding oil and sweat I have
seen grey eyes smile and a white hand beckon. In times of trial and
sore need I have turned desperately towards that faery glimmer, and
never have I come back unencouraged or unrefreshed.

Of my friend, too, I think often, as I know he thinks of me. Of our
dear old rooms on the Walk; of our cosy evenings alone; of our rambles
in search of the Perfect Pub (where, he told me, they sold hot rum up
to 3 a.m.); of the Chelsea Freaks, who add so unconsciously to the
gaiety of the nations--how I have laughed incontinently, and how some
fireman's face would brighten when I laughed, though he knew not the
reason!

Of books, too, I have many thoughts; which reminds me that one cannot
imagine how different are the "values" of books, out here at sea, to
their values at home in the metropolis. To steal a phrase from
chemistry, their "valency" alters. Their